


Kise Ryouta Has a Soulmate

by Holle_wood



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, I apologise, Kise is rly rly angsty, M/M, because apparently thats all i know how to write, dont go in expecting much and you wont be disappointed, there’s a happy ending tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-04 13:32:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15842304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Holle_wood/pseuds/Holle_wood
Summary: But maybe the marks are less of a certainty and more of a suggestion. Maybe some people just aren't lovable.Kise has formulated this opinion from personal experience. Knows this, in fact, because at thirteen he met the boy he was fated to love. And that boy was not fated to love him in return.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy this ABSOLUTE. TRASH. There is no real story just angst and a poor dumb boy looking for love. Also minus tens points from House WritesBadFic for the weird backstory I invented for Kise because I wanted him angstier.

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No one knows where the soul marks come from, or why people have them. Why they link each person to another. Everybody has their own preconceived notions, and their own expectations. Their own hopes of being one of the lucky few to meet someone made just for them, and for whom they were made. 

But maybe the marks are less of a certainty and more of a suggestion. Maybe some people just aren't lovable. 

Kise Ryouta has formulated this opinion from personal experience. Knows this, in fact, because at thirteen he met the boy he was fated to love. And that boy was not fated to love him in return. 

.

Ryouta is six in his earliest complete memory. He is six and his mother is pulling him along behind her. She is not a real person in this memory. More the impression of a painfully tight grip around his wrist and a long waterfall of shiny blond hair, swinging in front of his face as he stumbles along. Something beautiful, but far away. 

It's cold, and snowing. The streets are empty and dark. He doesn't know where they are or where they are going. He doesn't dare ask. 

His mother loves him more on some days than she does on others.

By the time they stop in front of a fancy gate, Ryouta can no longer feel his toes. His nose burns and runs in equal measure and his cheeks feel numb and fat. He makes no sound. Doesn't complain. 

His mother is beautiful but she does not love him very much today, he thinks. 

His mother opens the gate and walks up the paved path to a large door, dragging Ryouta behind her and ignoring his stumbles. She rings the doorbell and Ryouta does not remember what was actually said by his mother and the voice that answered her through the intercom. Later when he is older and wiser he will be able to make a fair guess, but on that night he was very young, very cold and very tired. He did not listen. 

He does remember the man who opened the door. He was tall, older and stern faced. Ryouta remembered most strongly the weight of his gaze, how he had shrunk into himself to avoid it. The man had kept his eyes on Ryouta the whole time that he spoke to Ryouta's mother. Ryouta had felt even colder.

This conversation he remembered in part. 

"I can't keep him. He ruins everything. They don't want me when they see him."

"We can't take him."

"Please. Just for a little while. I'll come back once I've paid everything off, I swear. Just for a month." 

Another woman had appeared in the doorway and the discussion had continued. Ryouta had been ushered into the house by the end of the exchange. His mother grabbed him by the shoulders on the doorstep, before he took that final step in, and pulled him close to her in a tight hug that surprised him. He hesitantly raised his arms.

"Be good Ryo-chan," his mother had whispered fiercely in his ear. "Be as good as you can until I get back. Mummy loves you." 

Even in hindsight, at that moment he thinks she meant it. 

She had released him and left immediately, hurrying back the way they had come, and leaving the smell of roses behind her. Ryouta watched that flicker of blond in the night with incomprehension. He watched until the other woman with black hair pulled him further inside. 

The door closed with a finality that lingered in his memories. And Ryouta faced two strangers with cold in his bones and everything he owned on his back. 

"Hello Ryouta-kun," the woman had said, after a hurried, whispered exchange with the man. 

"I'm Honoka, your aunt. This is Hiroshi, your uncle. You'll be staying with us for a little while until your mother comes back." 

"Okay."

Ryouta had blinked heavy eyelids, swaying on the spot. Honoka had noticed immediately, taking his backpack off his back and corralling him up the stairs. He had been shown into a room. It had a large desk in the middle and while Honoka urged him to change into clothes she pulled from his backpack he stared at the bookshelves along the walls. Hiroshi had followed them in with a futon in his arms a minute later.

The rest was a blur. The last thing Ryouta remembered was closing his eyes to a white ceiling, disturbingly unfamiliar in that it wasn't cracked at all.

.

Ryouta is eight when he finally accepts with an aching heart that his mother is not coming back to get him. 

Honoka and Hiroshi don't say anything. His cousins don't know that anything needs to be said. But then the answers are in the silence itself. Ryouta just feels it, deep inside himself. She is not coming back and there is a good chance his uncle and aunt may not be interested in waiting much longer. They are kind but he is not their son, and this was not the agreement they made. 

Ryouta panics. 

He thought he was a good boy for his mother. Even now he thinks he is a good boy. Quiet, unassuming, undemanding. Everything his mother had wanted from him. Everything his aunt and uncle could have hoped for from a surprise obligation they did not want. It's been his best defence all his life. 

But if it was not enough for his mother it will not be enough for his aunt and uncle. He must be better. If they don't want who he is now, he will be someone else. Only, how can he do that if he doesn't know who they want to begin with?

He has no answer until his aunt comes into his room when he gets home from school one day, hands him a pile of laundry and sits down. She asks him how his day went. Ryouta smiles and tells her what he thinks she wants to hear. It was fun, the work is easy, and he has lots of friends. 

But his aunt doesn't smile back right away, as she usually does, her expression tight in a way that makes Ryouta sick to his stomach. Maybe this is the day everything collapses around him again. 

"You know Ryo-chan," she begins. "I was so worried when you first came to us. You were so quiet. And from what I've heard of Makoto-San, she was such a lively child. I thought maybe you weren't happy here. I worried you wouldn't adjust."

Ryouta watched her like a cornered animal. But her expression opened into something much warmer. She smiled earnestly at him, "But I think I was wrong. I think we just didn't make things clear enough. You are such a brave boy, and you are welcome here. I want you to be happy, and feel comfortable in this house. We are a family, you're part of that too." 

Ryouta had smiled at her, thanked her, and let the seed of love in him grow slightly. She'd told him want she wanted. He could be what she wanted.

Maybe his mother had wanted quiet, had wanted obedience- had wanted him to not exist at all. Ryouta hadn't given her that; she'd had to leave him behind. His aunt wanted something different. Ryouta would be happy, he would be lively, and he would succeed. They wouldn't have a reason to walk away from him this time. 

.

Ryouta is eleven when he first thinks of soulmates with any kind of depth. They had been in the background for him, just an ever-present, accepted part of life. Ryouta had had bigger things to worry about than a fated connection to someone he was staggeringly unlikely to meet. But he learns quickly that isn't the case for most people. 

"Ryo-chan!" His aunt calls up the stairs on a Monday morning. "Are you dressed yet? You're gonna be late!" 

"Sorry!" Ryouta wheezes as he bursts into the kitchen, uniform and hair subtly and naturally (artfully) tousled, an apologetic grin on his face as he slides into a seat beside his oldest cousin and grabs the bowl of rice his aunt hands him. His aunt laughs cheerfully as he tucks in with all the gusto of a growing boy.

"No one's going to steal it," his cousin comments wryly after a moment of watching him. Ryouta pokes his tongue out at her and she snorts as she returns to eating her breakfast with affected grace. 

Mari's in her second year of high school, tall and pretty. He likes her a lot, way more than Sakura and Yuzuru, who say nothing to him at all because they are two years older than him, and utterly convinced that attending middle school places them in a different league to a grade schooler like Ryouta. The twins are far more wrapped up in each other than they are willing to pay attention to Ryouta anyway. Which is fine, in his opinion, because even though they can be fun to play with sometimes, Mari doesn't mind taking him to see action hero movies on the weekend.

"Goodbye!"

"Bye bye!"

"See you later!"

The girls get up one after the other, having come down earlier to finish breakfast on time. Honoka gets a hug from Mari and kisses both twins on the cheek, waving them out the door. 

"C'mon Ryo-chan, you really will be late," Mari calls over her shoulder as she leaves. "You should be stricter with him," she adds to Honoka. "He's hopeless every morning." But strict wasn't really his aunt's style and she just waves off her eldest daughter, watching Ryouta indulgently.

Ryouta meets her eye and promptly shovels half a bowl of rice down his throat, chugging a glass of water to wash it down before he chokes. He leaps to his feet, quickly adjusting his appearance in a display of vanity so natural he barely even notices he’s doing it. 

"Goodbye!" Ryouta cries, making to dash out of the kitchen and keep dashing until he'd made it to school. Honoka smiles at him from where she is leaning against the sink, calling him back before he has time to disappear. 

"Have you forgotten something, Ryo-chan?"

"Never," Ryouta grins, darting back to grab his school bag from beside the table anyway.  His aunt keeps smiling, but there is something sad in her expression that Ryouta doesn't understand, and ignores as he leaves even quicker than he'd planned to.

Ryouta is wheezing by the time he skids through the school gates but he isn't actually late. Overall he counts the whole morning as a success, despite the dishevelled state of his hair. He waits until he's walking in the classroom door before trying to fix it, preening fussily under the eyes of his classmates. 

He greets the room cheerfully, grinning good-naturedly at the ribbing he gets from his friends for both his fussing over his hair and his lateness.

"Something this great doesn't just happen," he crows, tossing an arm around another boy's neck and rubbing his knuckles against his head casually. "It takes time and beauty sleep." 

The girls giggle in the corner, flashing him shy smiles that he returns boldly. His friend yelps and struggles, grabbing Ryouta’s wrist and twisting until Ryouta is forced to let him go, both of them laughing. They tussle until the homeroom teacher walks in and has them settle down for lessons.

It’s just another average day until lunch, when a girl from the next class comes pelting into the classroom at break neck speed and breaks to a stop in front of the girl who sits next to Ryouta. She’s breathing hard, intelligible shrieks interspersed throughout her panting. Most of the class looks over in curiosity, Ryouta and his friends included.

“You’ll never believe what happened!” She manages finally, flushed red with excitement. Her friend sits forward eagerly.

“What?” She demands.

“Yoko found her soulmate!” She exclaims delightedly. The class breaks from hushed silence to excited chatter. Many of the girls get up to rush over, no doubt full of questions. No boy wants to be seen as that eager, but everyone wants to know more. Ryouta’s hand moves automatically to his wrist band. He rubs his fingers over the material, ignoring his friends to listen to the girl. She perks up even more, now with such a large audience.

“She was walking home yesterday and bumped into a boy from another school. He helped pick up her things and he says he’s seen her before. They live on the same street! He introduces himself and she’s got his name on her hand and Yoko tells him her name and it was written on his arm now they’re together!”

The class erupts again, until a girl next to Ryouta interrupts. “Wait, together how? Are they going to get married?”

“Well they have to once they’re older, don’t they? They’re going to fall in love because they’re perfect for each other!”

The girls squeal together until the bell rings for the end of lunch. Ryouta half listens to them, half listens to the conversation his friends are having, but doesn’t really hear any of it. He feels dazed for the rest of the day, waving goodbye to his friends at the gate rather than going to the park with them. He’s distracted at home too, responding to the twins’ ribbing a beat too late, and eating less than he normally would. No one says anything until right before he heads upstairs to bed.

“Are you alright Ryo-chan? Anything happen at school today?” Honoka asks suddenly, from behind him. Ryouta jumps, one foot already on the first step, but recovers quickly. He shakes his head with a smile over his shoulder.

“Nope. Goodnight!” He darts up the stairs, just catching her ‘goodnight’ as he reaches the top. It sounds strangely like a sigh.

Ryouta lies in silence that night. He raises his wrist before his eyes and stares at those characters for a long time. He thinks about finding someone with his name on their wrist. He thinks about being together because they were made for each other and eventually getting married and having a family together.

Then he thinks about the feeling of being loved unconditionally by a person made just for him. Thinks about being able to drop his guard, to be himself and have that part of him cherished no matter what. Thinks about all the ways it could go wrong. All the terrible ways it could hurt. 

Soul mates are supposed to love you. But then so are mothers. So are fathers. 

Ryouta covers his wrist with one trembling hand and prays fervently that he never meets Aomine Daiki. He's eleven years old and he's long since learned that there are some things you're better off not knowing. 

.

Ryouta’s world turns on its side abruptly in the second year of Middle school, and yet somehow manages to stay exactly the same.

He’s doing what he’s been doing since he started at Teiko; sleeping through classes, charming girls, staying friendly with everybody without really connecting with anybody and bouncing from club to club, getting better at his perfect copy every time but never sticking to one place.

He gets confessed to a lot as well, obviously. But it all seems more trouble than it’s worth to Ryouta, and he turns them down gently, eyes mournful and reverent hand placed over his wristband. Somehow implying that he’s saving himself for his soulmate makes him even more popular, but no one’s upset when he turns them down so Ryouta calls it a win.

It’s incredibly boring, a little lonely and little tiring. He doesn’t feel as happy as everyone kept insisting he should be. He masters everything in every club so quickly it’s not even fun anymore. But everybody likes him and his athletic achievements make his aunt beam and his uncle clap a strong hand to his shoulder so Ryouta sees no need to change what he’s doing. Maybe this is as good as it gets. At least being good at sport made up for his shitty grades.

It doesn’t take much, in the end, to completely shatter his status quo. Just one basketball to the head as he walks past the school gym, and an everyday conversation.

One hand rubs the back of his head, the other grabs the ball from the ground as he turns. There’s a group of kids standing on the court, and a particularly handsome boy breaks away and jogs over. He stops in front of Ryouta, all easy grace and bright grin against dark skin. Ryouta’s heart skips slightly, and he blinks.

"This yours?"

"Yeah, thanks!” The boy reaches out to grab the ball, eyeing the way Ryouta stills rubs his head with his other hand. He pauses, both hands on the ball without actually lifting it from Ryouta’s hands.

 “Hey, sorry about hitting you. Are you cool?"

Ryouta smiles and shrugs. He takes his hand out from under the basketball a second later.

“Doesn’t hurt anymore,” he says, slightly stilted and distracted by how nice this boy sounds, with his smooth, surprisingly deep voice. The boy spins the ball around on one finger and grins again when Ryouta’s eyes are drawn to the movement, impressed despite himself and already memorising the movement to attempt it himself later.

“Cool. Do you play basketball?” He asks, bouncing the ball to another finger as his grin becomes even more smug. The question is innocent, but there’s something of a challenge in the way he says it, something that sends a thrill racing through Ryouta, and the foreign desire to prove something. He has never been challenged before, and basketball had been one club he hadn’t made his way around to in first year.

“Not yet,” he replies, shifting his weight back and sliding his hands into his pockets. He tilts his head, a smirk curling about the corner of his lips. The boy looks delighted, his grin widening.

“No time like the present,” he declares, jerking his head towards the court, where a few players have stopped to watch their conversation and wonder what is taking their teammate so long. The boy sees it too, starts walking towards the gym with confidence Ryouta will follow.

“No time like the present,” Ryouta echoes decidedly. He pauses a moment, then follows.

“I’m Aomine Daiki,” the boy casts over his shoulder as Ryouta catches up at jog.

And suddenly the world turns on its side and everything is technicolor. He looks closely and sees a boy without a wristband, yes, but with a name Ryouta knows better than his own. Ryouta's heart pounds in his chest, his whole body singing with something he has no word for. He forgets himself for two seconds too long. Forgets to think it through like he should. Takes yet another leap of faith- and shame on him, fooled too many times to count.

He blurts out all his hope and love and joy in three words as they reach the gym.

"I'm Kise Ryouta."

And suddenly the world drops back to normal, continuing down and fading to grey at the edges because Aomine Daiki gives him another casual, friendly grin that tells Ryouta in no uncertain terms that his name means nothing more to this boy than anyone else's.

“Let’s see if you can play basketball, Kise,” Aomine says. He walks into the gym, hollering out something that Ryouta doesn’t hear, stopped dead on the doorstep with a ringing in his ears.

Ryouta takes this one unfathomably profound hurt into his hands and cradles it for one self-indulgent second before he lays it to rest beside the others and forces his brightest smile to his lips. He walks into the gym, determined to make something out of nothing, even if that something is a sport rather than the love of his life.

It turns out Ryouta is just as good at basketball as he is at everything else. And yet he is nothing compared to the other players on the first string. There is so much to learn, to strive for. So much _challenge_ that even with his useless soul mark burning on his skin like a brand Ryouta wants to cry in relief.

.

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	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ignore the typos pls I am very small and very tired

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Ryouta is thirteen when he makes his first real friend. They got off to a shaky start, him and Kuroko. It was almost entirely Ryouta’s fault- he’s man enough to admit that.

Aomine is like a storm moving across the court. All the grace of a panther rolls through his body as he moves across the court, unstoppable and beautiful. Ryouta watches with hungry eyes that he can’t seem to tear away. Aomine tearing through every player on the team in equal measure makes him burn.

 _I could do better than them,_ Ryouta thinks frantically. _I’m always better in the end_. The more he thinks the more it builds, a hint of venom creeping in. _Give me a day and I’d be more of a challenge, I just need a day to learn and I'll copy everything. I’ll be so good he won’t want to play with anyone else, but instead I’m stuck with-_

“Kise-kun.”

Ryouta glances to the side, finding the thoroughly unimpressive figure of Kuroko Tetsuya watching him. Ryouta gives him a wide smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. He is not use to feeling so much vitriol that he can’t bury it under a sunny personality. This year is just full of firsts.

It’s not that he particularly dislikes Kuroko- it’s just that the moment Ryouta beat Haizaki out of contention he was passed off to Kuroko. It’s resentment. Ryouta is better than Haizaki, he’s better than the boys playing against Aomine now, and he’s better than Kuroko. So why wasn’t he over there with the other first stringers?

Ryouta hasn’t really had a chance to get to know the others- he was a little side-tracked by other things (Aomine-) but he knows that however weird Midorima and Murasakibara are, they’re good at basketball. He doesn’t really see how he can say the same for Kuroko, who is short and skinny and so lacking in presence that Ryouta keeps forgetting he’s there.

“We should start practising too, Kise-kun.”

Ryouta starts, his gaze having drifted back to Aomine while his mind wandered; point proven. Ryouta heaves a sigh and reluctantly turns away from the rest of the court. If this is what it takes to play with and against Aomine then Ryouta will do it.

“Sure thing Senpai, what should we do?” Ryouta doesn’t particularly try to hide his sarcasm, but Kuroko is placid enough to ignore it anyway.

He ignores a lot of snark from Ryouta up until he doesn’t and Ryouta realises he’s perhaps not as good as he thinks he is, and Kuroko might be far, far better than Ryouta’s given him credit for.

Watching Kuroko misdirect the ball into Aomine’s capable hands in yet another breathtaking play on the court, Ryouta has to reconsider a few things. Maybe, he grudgingly admits to himself, his biggest problem with Kuroko had been that he wasn’t Aomine.

“Good morning!” He chirps cheerfully at the next before school practise, all but bouncing up to Kuroko with his brightest grin. It feels like the realest expression Ryouta given anyone for a while now. After seeing what Kuroko can do and experiencing first-hand how much there is left for him to learn, Ryouta feels less like an unwanted toddler to be babysat and more like a player in training.

Kuroko blinks at him. Ryouta beams brighter.

“Well, senpai?” He urges, not sarcastic in the least.

He doesn’t say sorry, but Kuroko is smart enough to figure it out what he means. And sure enough, Kuroko only stares him down for a single minute.

“You are a brat, Kise-kun, and it is too early to be so loud,” He says placidly, face smooth and eyes all but luminous. “I think you should start with laps.”

Ryouta laughs, short and startled. It’s not controlled or elegant, but it’s real and Ryouta surprises himself with it. He stares back at Kuroko, noting the tiny smile just curling the corners of his mouth. Ryouta grins back.

“Maybe you’re right, Kurokocchi,” He agrees with another laugh. “But only if you do them with me.”

.

Befriending Kuroko has the bonus advantage of getting Ryouta time to hang out with Aomine out of practise hours. Especially when Kuroko is late meeting them at the gate and Ryouta gets to spend ten minutes with Aomine alone.

“Heard Morikawa-senpai confessed to you today,” Aomine says. “And your ungrateful ass turned her down.”

Though sometimes the topic of conversation leaves a little to be desired. Ryouta shrugs idly, throws him a lazy grin.

“She’s gorgeous,” He concedes easily. “But it wouldn’t have been fair.” He runs fingers over his wristband absently, barely even aware he’s doing it. He catches himself when he spies the look Aomine’s giving him. He can’t quite work out what it’s meant to mean but- it’s weird. He takes his hand away from his wrist entirely and leans back.

“What’s unfair Kise,” Aomine says like they haven’t missed a beat, “Is that nearly every girl in this goddamn school is shallow enough to throw themselves at your stupid face.”

Ryouta’s laugh stutters just a bit, the word shallow bouncing off the walls of his mind like a ping pong ball. He recovers quick though, mouth running on autopilot.

“You’re plenty handsome, Aominecchi. Girls just don’t like you because you’re a perv and you talk about boobs all the time. You’ve got to be charming. Whoo them, like me!”

“Uh huh.” Aomine gives him another strange look and Ryouta realises what he’s said too late. It’s obvious that Aomine is good looking, even to people who aren’t hopelessly in love with him, but Ryouta tends to avoid that train of thought as much as possible. Aomine opens his mouth and Ryouta panics.

_It’s only weird if you make it weird!_

“Are you sure Kurokocchi’s coming with us? He’s taking ages!” Ryouta declares abruptly.

He’s not always sure what option appeals to him more; walking to the station alone with Aomine or walking to the station with both of his two best friends, but after this awkward conversation he feels like he needs a buffer between them.

“Tetsu’s coming,” Aomine answers cheerfully, successfully distracted. “He just got held-up.” He says this second part with a twitch of his lips that can only mean Kuroko has been accosted by one person. Sure enough, when he emerges from the gym he’s being trailed by a girl with an impressive head of silken pink hair.

Kuroko gives them a slightly strained smile when they come to a stop on the sidewalk, one arm half-raised to hold her off him. Momoi Satsuki is a treasure Ryouta didn’t even consider when he joined the basketball team yet here she is and he is richer for her. He grins delightedly.

“Momocchi, hello,” he says.

“Oi, get off Testu!” Aomine growls.

“Ki-chan!” Momoi exclaims, sweet as honey and ignoring Aomine completely. “I just had the most fascinating discussion with a member of your fan club. Apparently, I need to distance myself from you before you are corrupted by my wicked feminine wiles?”

“Momocchi I warned you of my virtue and yet you stole it anyway,” Ryouta mourns dramatically. He throws an arm out to the side for Momoi to tuck herself under, winking at a relieved Kuroko as she does. It’s easy having her there, nice even. Ryouta always forgets how much he likes to be close to people until he is.

With that thought in mind he keeps her there as they follow on after Aomine and Kuroko. He’s happy for the momentary distance from Aomine, and to watch them both have fun the way they always do together. Momoi is happy to stay under his arm; he knows she’s subtly preening over all the passers-by who are impressed with how pretty they are together and he plays it up to help her out a little. He pulls her closer, sends an adoring look at her head and honestly delights in the glimpse of a dimple he sees when she notices him doing it.

They’re almost to the point where Ryouta will have to split off and go his separate way when Momoi speaks up.

“Ki-chan,” She says quietly, “Can I ask you a question?”

Ryouta blinks at her. “Of course,” he says immediately. “What’s wrong?”

Momoi looks down at his wrist- no, at his wristband. Ryouta instinctively pulls it away, tries to sweep it behind him casually like it wasn’t on purpose, no, just a little encouragement to look somewhere else. Unfortunately for him, Momoi is as direct as Aomine and twice as tenacious.

Her eyes shoot up to his face and she frowns.

“Is that your mark under there?” She asks directly. Ryouta’s chest goes tight and he’s not quick enough to stop his face doing the same.

“That’s a rude question, Momocchi,” he says flatly. She doesn’t back down- Momoi never really does.

“Maybe,” She allows. “But it’s broken the heart of every girl in the school at least once and I just wanted to know whether you meant it or not.”

Ryouta pursed his lips. “I suppose you know now then.”

“Yes, but not why you hide it like you do,” Momoi says. If there was anyone could figure it out from context clues it was Momoi- that must be why Ryouta’s hands suddenly feel sweaty and his heart pounds. There’s a frustrated core to Momoi’s tone that’s almost enough to irritate him when he’s so worked up, but then Ryouta actually looks at her carefully, and he can see she’s not just asking because she’s curious; he worries her.

“It’s fine,” he says, letting himself soften and smiling at her. “Sorry I can’t tell you why, but I promise I’m fine.”

“I imagine you would,” Momoi mutters nonsensically. “Sorry for asking.” She smiles though, tucks her head back into his shoulder for the remaining walk.

Ryouta’s heart doesn’t quite calm down until he’s waving goodbye to the three of them. He practically runs home after they’re out of sight, trying to shake it off. The cold air mostly clears his head and by the time he’s walked in the door he’s put it behind him. Momoi was intuitive, and clever as anything, but she wasn’t a mind reader.

His aunt calls out to him from the bottom of the stairs as he goes into his room.

“Are you having fun at School Ryo-chan?” Honoka asks hesitantly. Ryouta grins. Apart from the disturbing conversation with Momoi it was a genuinely good day.

“Sure am!”

“That’s good, you seemed a little . . . flat at the start of this year. I thought it might be Mari going away to college but that’s silly isn’t it?”

“Hmm nah,” Ryouta says. He leans his head into the hallway to smile down properly at Honoka. He knows she worries, and that he doesn’t always convince her not to. If there’s anyone he doesn’t want to cause trouble for it’s his aunt. “I miss her. She’s better company than the weasel twins. It was just a good day for basketball.”

.

Ryouta wasn’t lying to his aunt for once. He is having more fun at school than he’s ever had before. More of it is real, anyway.

He doesn’t know what else to think when he looks back at his team and realises he has not only one unrequited love in Aomine, but a friend in every member of the first string. He might be just a bit more attached to them than they are to him but that’s okay- Ryouta’s never had real friends before and he’s starting from behind. And looking at them, he thinks he’s okay with not being anyone’s favourite if he’s their _something_.

Kuroko, quiet and more sarcastic than anyone else he knows, also the truest person Ryouta’s ever met.

Momoi, gorgeous like a movie star, sweet as peaches and cheeky enough to know how to use both points in her favour.

Akashi, fierce and commanding, yet also the biggest nag Ryouta’s witnessed in his life because so help me god if Ryouta isn’t eating well how can he play his best basketball?

Midorima, who’s his own man- and has little time for Ryouta besides- but occasionally, when Ryouta gives him a pass just right and the ball swishes through the net like magic, smirks at him in an understanding of just how good they are.

Even Murasakibara, who sometimes offers to share his snacks if he’s feeling sleepy enough and is such a terrifying wall on the court that Ryouta knows if he can face this he can face anything.

And Aomine.

Aomine is warmer than ever, a smug, competitive, laughing force of nature. He’s such an asshole except for the times where he isn’t. Every touch, every joke, every time they play against each other and every time their eyes meet Ryouta falls a little more in love. He doesn’t know how that’s even possible when the feeling already howls and rumbles under his skin like a hurricane but here he is, drowning in it.

He can see how maybe the universe thought someone like Aomine- who is never anyone but himself, loud, proud and unapologetic to a fault- he can see why someone somewhere would see that as a good fit for Ryouta. He can also see why maybe someone like Ryouta wasn’t the best fit for Aomine- it would be a less than symbiotic relationship- but that’s a much harder pill to swallow.

It is what it is, he reasons philosophically to his bedroom ceiling. Fate says what fate says.

.

Ryouta is still thirteen and still in his second year of middle school when he lands his first modelling job. He gets called in off the street by a scout, which isn't that surprising. With his unusual gold colour scheme and pretty face Ryouta knows that he's more attractive than most kids his age. It’s been commented on by many an adult, and he knows why the girls he chats to, and the ones that confess like him so much. They find him beautiful, and he honestly thinks he likes that.

(If only Aomine thought you were beautiful too-)

“I’ll have to talk to my club captain, see if I can fit it in around basketball,” Ryouta tells the agent, smiling gratefully, but unwilling to agree to anything that might stop him from playing basketball. He has such a long way to go, after all, until he catches up to the others. There’s only so far a perfect copy will take him, when he’s playing against people who’ve had so much longer to practise.

Akashi doesn’t mind, as it turns out. He lays out the practise schedule in a no-nonsense tone and tells Ryouta not to miss one in a voice that brooks no argument. He also smiles and congratulates Ryouta on landing the job though, so Ryouta takes it as permission provided his basketball doesn’t fall by the wayside.

“You got scouted?” Aomine asks, coming in on the tail end of the conversation to drape an arm around Ryouta’s neck and pull him into a fierce noogie. “Way to go poodle! Here lemme do your hair for you.”

“Get off you-” Ryouta gasps out a half laugh, struggling to break free from Aomine because his blood is singing and he needs to chill- “You dick!”

“What’s that? Sorry you’re such a big star I’m not sure whether I need to go through your agency to organise a meeting before we can talk.”

Aomine tightens his arm and noogies harder. Ryouta would wail if he could get enough air into his lungs. Alas he manages several squeaks and a whole lot of laughter. He’s tousled and undone and probably red as anything but Aomine’s laughing above his head, body shaking against Ryouta’s, and Ryouta doesn’t particularly care what he looks like right now.

“Kise-kun is very red for a model.”

Yep, red. Aomine swears and drops Ryouta, spinning around. Ryouta stumbles off a few steps to catch his breath. “I couldn’t breathe,” He wheezes to Kuroko. “Everybody has off days.”

“I’m gonna put a bell on you Tetsu,” Aomine mutters ominously. “You’re a menace.”

“If you say so Aomine-kun,” Kuroko says, eyes wide and placid. “You should try not to laugh at Midorima-kun, he is also having an off day.” Ryouta straightens, getting his breath back in time to see Midorima struggle through the doors of the gym with a giant plush Hello Kitty in his arms. Aomine immediately cracks up, Ryouta not far behind and Kuroko pretends he’s not smirking.

“It’s a necessary precaution,” Midorima says stiffly upon reaching them. “Do not complain in my presence should you savages get what you deserve.” He places the plushie on the bench and nods to Akashi, who has been ignoring them all in favour of his phone.

Aomine fires something back that has Ryouta laughing harder when he sparks a true blue argument with Midorima. Kuroko adds fuel to the fire here and there, shooting an exasperated Akashi innocent looks as he tries to defuse the situation and is foiled at every turn.

It only gets worse when Murasakibara walks through the door trailing Momoi- who’s dangling snacks out behind him like a carrot on a stick- and Ryouta finds himself laughing so hard it’s just soundless, full body shakes. Ryouta can’t remember ever feeling like this. And it’s only going to get better when they actually start practising, when he has Kuroko to teach him and Aomine to egg him on.

Ryouta knows he would not give this up for anything, no matter how much he likes looking good and dressing up. Not just for the blinding edge of Aomine’s smile but also the curl of Kuroko’s grin, the feel of the ball in his hands and the court under his feet, already five opponents before him he can’t beat and more to come.

But if he doesn’t have to choose that’s good too, and it’s a scant few days before he walks into a studio twenty minutes from school and an older lady sits him down in front of a mirror with her hands full of brushes.

"They're going to love you," she says, cupping his cheeks in her hands (they are soft and worn- she reminds him of Honoka).

 _That’s the plan_ , Ryouta thinks. He smiles, bright and beautiful, not sure who he’s trying to convince. As if on cue the lady coos and pinches his cheeks delightedly, and Ryouta supposes it doesn’t really matter.

.

Ryouta is fourteen, beautiful and talented, when he is reminded that no matter how hard he tries it's never really enough. Ryouta knows now for certain all the terrible ways a soul mark can hurt. Aomine will not love him because he's not meant to but god help him he has to try, just once. He has to know for certain if this is truly the sum of that tiny candle flame of love he has nurtured all these years for someone he thought he'd never meet.

He feels more desperate now. Kuroko and Aomine grow more together by the day and while Ryouta’s basketball is getting better and he’s getting closer to Aomine none of it is happening quick enough. So he presses the issue.

Ryouta knows as he does it that he's making a mistake. Knows that this isn't going to end well. Knows better by now than to take chances where other people are concerned. Knows all of this and still leans forward to press a kiss to Aomine's laughing mouth as they sit together in the empty change room before practise.

For a moment everything is light and warm and Ryouta can feel both his heart and Aomine's beating through the connection of their mouths. Can feel as the residual shakes of laughter running through Aomine's frame fade abruptly. Then two large, ridiculously warm hands grab his shoulders and urge him back.

Ryouta resists and lingers, just for a second. But he knows how this will turn out (Ryouta doesn't have a great track record where other people are concerned) and commits the feel of Aomine so close to memory even as he follows the other boy's urging hands and retreats.

Aomine licks his lips, looks awkward, and drops his hands like they burn a half-second later when he realizes they still rest on Ryouta's shoulders. Ryouta waits with a familiar hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. His wrist burns under the band, as though his mark also knows that this is the day Ryouta is proven right about it.

"I'm sorry," Aomine begins, struggling for the words that would make his rejection the most gentle because Ryouta is his friend. Aomine loves his friends and he does not hurt them on purpose. Ryouta loves him in a way that is painful, selfish and unfair.

He wants to cry, to be small and sad and weak. Wants to plead and beg and convince Aomine that Ryouta could make him happy if Aomine would just let him try. But that's not what Aomine expects from him, and definitely not what he wants. Ryouta has to give people what they want, and he shouldn't have forgotten that.

"Alright, but it's your loss Aominecchi," he grins (a little gentler than normal, to let Aomine know that this wasn't just a joke). "I'm very popular I'll have you know!"

Aomine is startled for a moment, and in the back of his gaze Ryouta can see the part of him that might see through Ryouta’s charade. He begs Aomine with his smile to let it go. They have been friends long enough for Aomine to recognise that plea. He follows Ryouta’s lead with obvious relief, clearly glad to push this into the category of Ryouta just being Ryouta.

"Yeah yeah, whatever you say," he answers more cheerfully. They go back to joking around until the others get there. Aomine still side-eyes him all through practice though, not completely sold and looking for cracks. Ryouta dials himself to eleven, flirting, working and laughing until the last bit of tension flows from Aomine's posture and they're back where they started.

He barely even notices Kuroko, so focused as he is on Aomine. Notices him only, in fact, when he turns away from helping Aomine tease Midorima to find the other boy watching him. Ryouta tenses involuntarily before he remembers that Kuroko should have no reason to think he would mind being watched. He relaxes almost as quick and flashes his mentor a quick, blinding smile.

"Something wrong Kurokocchi?" He inquires with aggressive cheer.

Something in Kuroko's eyes flickers and Ryouta's gut drops for a wicked second before he just shakes his head.

"Only that you're not paying attention," he says quietly.

A basketball promptly smacks Ryouta on the back of the head and suddenly Aomine is between them.

"Yeah Kise," he taunts, roughly tousling Ryouta's hair as he collides with his back and side. "Pay attention!" Ryouta whines childishly because it's what's expected and fights the urge to flee when he can feel Aomine so close again so soon, knowing now for certain that he'll never be as close as he really wants.

"Aomine-kun should focus more too," Kuroko adds, deadpan. Aomine grins and makes a big show of advancing on Kuroko menacingly.

"What are trying to say, Tetsu?" He demands playfully.

Then Aomine slings an arm around Kuroko, who protests even with a small smile on his face and Ryouta is glad for the other boy's closeness all of a sudden. It's a reminder he sorely needed. A reminder of the reason Aomine was never going to kiss back, and proof that the mark on Ryouta's wrist means nothing.

“Aomine-kun is a brute,” Kuroko states mildly. He’s red in the face from the strength of the headlock Aomine’s got him in, but his voice is so easy he might have been relaxing on a tropical beach.

“Aaaaaaaand yet you love me,” Aomine crows. He dwarfs the other boy, wrapped up as they are in a twist of dark and light skin.

“An arrogant brute,” is the muffled reply. Ryouta watches Aomine all but rub against Kuroko like a cat in heat. And Kuroko, for his part, doesn’t try to get away. He’s slippery like a snake and stubborn like a mule; Kuroko does what Kuroko wants and nothing else.

Neither of them looks at Ryouta, but he takes it for the warning it is. Message received, loud and clear. Akashi calls them back to practise and Ryouta trails a step behind the others.

Aomine loves Kuroko. Aomine is in love with Kuroko. And Ryouta cannot be what Aomine wants because he already has it in someone else. 

The rest of the afternoon passes in a blur. He vaguely remembers making a big deal out of a show he was going to miss and pelting out of the change rooms in his uniform while the other boys are still getting in the shower. He vaguely remembers sprinting home with eyes that burned (but stayed dry).

Ryouta jumps in the shower as soon as he gets home, avoiding his aunt's alarmed questions as he flies by her and Sakura in the kitchen. He tears off his uniform, ripping off his wristband just as quick and scrub scrub scrubbing at the skin until it's red and raw and aching. In the end the mark is still there. A bold lie and a glaring reminder that not even destiny gives people like Ryouta anything for free.

.

He lets that first night be his only indulgence. He cries silently in the shower and lets the tears that roll down his face get lost. He skips dinner with a tired half-smile at his aunt that he knows fails to reassure her in the least. He crawls into bed earlier than he has in years and lies awake. He doesn’t cry again, his eyes are too drained for that, but they ache and feel stuck open anyway.

Later when he is calmer, lying in bed alone in the dark, Ryouta finds his resolve. Honoka has given up asking him what’s wrong; she has gone to bed and the hall outside his room is shadowed and quiet. A soft offer to listen whenever he’s ready had following her retreating footsteps, but while Ryouta appreciates her kindness, he has never wanted to burden his aunt more than he already has. He pretends to be asleep and lets her go without a word.

In the familiar stillness of his bedroom- the same room that was once Hiroshi’s study, where he lay that first long night without his mother- Ryouta pulls himself together.

He will learn to live with this as he has learned to live with the rest. Nothing lasts forever. It is raw now but one day in the future he will see Aomine with his soul mate, and maybe it’s not Ryouta but it will be Kuroko. Ryouta loves them both, in different ways yes, but he loves them all the same. Maybe, in the future when the wound will not be so fresh, maybe he will be happy for them anyway.

Kuroko and Aomine together are something more than he can understand.

At least if Ryouta never tells Aomine the whole truth, he will be spared the one final indignity of being pitied.

.

.

.


	3. Chapter 3

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.

.

Ryouta is fifteen and in his third year of middle school when he learns that things can always get worse.

Days drift into weeks that drift into months that have passed since Ryouta pressed his heart into Aomine’s hands and had it handed back- gently, but firmly. It takes something from him, that day. Ryouta’s not sure what, and he’s too scared to find out.

He compensates, as much as he can. His grades drop a little but the number of confessions he receives from his classmates increase. He even has a few more boys pull him aside to discretely enquire about his preferences, made bolder by his warm smiles and avid attention. Ryouta refuses them even as he gushes about it over the dinner table, waving his success in Sakura’s face while she pouts and whines. Mariko’s recent acquisition of a boyfriend has driven a wedge between the twins that has never existed before, and Ryouta wouldn’t be doing his job if he didn’t try to rile them up over it.

He knows that Honoka doesn’t believe him when he says he’s fine fine fine no really I’m _fine-_

But pretending is what Ryouta does, so he keeps at it. It’s easier sometimes rather than others.

.

Ryouta’s half-way home a fortnight later when he realises he’s forgotten his sports jacket in the change room and runs back for it. He can always get it in the morning but the idea of being able to not go home just a little longer appeals to him. It’s getting harder to dodge Honoka, and between that and spending all afternoon at basketball practise, the walk home when he’s alone is the only part of the day where Ryouta has the time to just breathe.

So he runs back to school, guilt sitting in his stomach, until he’s rushing through the door of the changeroom without a second thought. He stops dead.

Kuroko pulls away from Aomine quickly, his mouth red and swollen from an activity Ryouta won’t name. Aomine’s arms are wrapped around his waist; they don’t move, keeping Kuroko close enough for their hair to blend together. 

There’s a long silence where Ryouta only stares, his mind mercifully blank. Kuroko is chagrined, easing back slightly. He looks like he might speak but Aomine breaks first, bluster to cover the faintest red on his cheeks. 

“Shit Kise, can’t you knock?” 

Ryouta opens his mouth, nothing comes out. He feels like he’s been sucker punched and hollowed out in one sick move. Aomine isn’t paying attention, too focused on himself, but Ryouta absently notes the moment Kuroko‘s eyes narrow as they focus on his face. It galvanises him into action. 

“Sorry!” He chirps, three octaves too high. “Don’t mind me, I can grab my jacket tomorrow. Have fun!” 

He ignores Kuroko’s hastily called out “Kise-kun-” and runs right on home. He doesn’t cry. He doesn’t really feel anything, for once.  

.

He sees it more now, how Aomine and Kuroko are closer than they had been before. He sees a lot of it because try as he might Ryouta can’t stop looking. He’s being obvious and he knows he is, and he’s only proven right by Momoi. 

It’s a matter of a few days with her eyes a resting weight on Ryouta’s shoulders before she snaps.

She marches into the gym after practise, when instead she’d normally go home with Aomine, and up to him where he sits on the bench. He assumes for a second that maybe Akashi has given her something to tell him until he sees the wetness of her eyes. Ryouta is startled, but he feels too flat to stop her when grabs his wrist between both and lifts it between them. She doesn’t try to take off the wrist band, just wraps it in her own two and cradles it between them like it’s worth the something Ryouta knows it isn’t. 

“Where’s yours?” Ryouta asks, voice nearly too dry to spit the words out but figuring he’s owed a few questions- if only to put them on equal footing. He doesn’t know how she figured it out, but it makes sense; knowing things was Momoi’s MO.

“Upper thigh, the name’s not Japanese.” There’s silence, then,

“Why don’t you tell him?” Momoi says desperately. It’s like a punch in the face and Ryouta is abruptly furious. Yes, why didn’t he tell Aomine? Because that worked out just  _so_ well for him last time he tried.

“You know why I can’t,” He snaps like a warning. If there’s anything Ryouta hates more than misery, it’s having an audience for it. Momoi shakes her head.

“I’m sure Tetsu-kun would understand-!”

“No!” Ryouta hisses furiously. That awful, terrible, selfish train of thought is all too familiar and all the more abhorrent for it. He appreciates her concern (or he will, later) but he _can’t_ even talk about considering what she’s asking. Break Aomine and Kuroko apart out of guilt so they can all three of them be miserable together? Just because Aomine wouldn’t be with Kuroko doesn’t mean he’d want Ryouta instead.

He glares at his feet. Momoi doesn’t flinch, but she does pause. Her grip tightens. “Because you’re fine, right?”

Ryouta lifts his head, stares her down. He pulls his hand away and stands.

“I will be.”

“Oh Ki-chan,” Momoi sighs, sounding a breath away from tears. He knows why this is making her so desperate, when she can’t get Aomine to listen and has to let her best friend drift further away with every day. He knows she’s begging this from him because she can’t beg want she really wants from Aomine. He even knows that it’s not personal. 

But Ryouta doesn’t have it in him to comfort her right now, not with his own eyes heavy and red around the edges. Not with his blood boiling like it does most days. He gives her a tight, pale imitation of his usual smile.

“Good talk, Momocchi. Let’s not do it again.”

He leaves, ignoring when she tries to call after him. Everything just gets worse after that, because now Ryouta has one more person to avoid. He doesn’t know where this all ends if no one’s willing to be the one who says stop. 

.

 “Kise-kun.”

“Mm yeah?”

“May we speak?”

This all seems very familiar to Ryouta, Momoi’s pleas still fresh in his memory. He shakes his head, shouldering his bag and heading for the door.

“Sorry Kurokocchi, no time today.”

Or any day. Ryouta has nothing to say to him.

.

Kuroko tries a few more times to get Ryouta alone. Ryouta avoids him with the same dogged determination that he applies to escaping his Aunt. That he applies to dodging Momoi, and Mari when she visits home. He drops more than a few modelling jobs, finding himself without the energy to play pretty for the cameras.

Instead he throws himself into basketball- which hasn’t let him down yet. Except something’s different there too. The generation of miracles is good. Too good. It’s too easy to win. There’s no challenge in it. They win and win and win again and Ryouta feels something heavy creeping up on him; a familiar, disappointing apathy.

He watches Aomine slowly withdraw further from the team, then from him, and even from Kuroko (it’s then that Ryouta knows something is truly wrong with Aomine- but something is wrong with him too, and if he can’t help himself why would he being able to help Aomine?). He watches the rest of the team do the same and they stop playing like a team. They stop acting like a team.

Ryouta pretends to be fine. He pretends not to notice how they are changing because he can’t find it in himself to care. If he can’t have Aomine, he can’t have his team and he can’t even have basketball, what’s the point? He pretends- like he’s said, Ryouta’s good at that.

So good, in fact, that he pretends not to notice anything right up until Kuroko looks at them all with something frighteningly like disgust in his eyes, and firmly turns his back.

.

After Kuroko quits the team, quits _Aomine_ , and Momoi looks like she wants to cry but is too tired to go through with it, Ryouta feels like he should at least say _something_.

It’s their final practise at Teiko and no one else from the first string even shows up until the very end, when Ryouta spies Aomine sulking in after everyone has left. He’s just missed Momoi, which Ryouta suspects was kind of the point. He breathes out heavily; he’d only come to practise today to catch Aomine, so the tightness in his body had been building for a good two hours.

“Hey Aominecchi,” he says, striding across the court with a ball in his hand and his most convincing grin. “You wanna play?”

Aomine jumps and quickly plays it off like he hasn’t. “Practise is over Kise,” he drawls lazily. “You should go home.”

He takes the ball when Ryouta offers it to him anyway. They play a few minutes of one on one. The thrill is still there, lingering under Ryouta’s skin but he’s well aware that Aomine’s not really trying because he doesn’t have to. He can sense the apathy radiating off him, and it should make Ryouta angry, but mostly it just hurts. He decides to get down to the real reason he’s here and not moping in a local park to avoid Honoka’s well-meaning but unbearable questions.

“Kurokocchi didn’t come today. Momoi said he really has quit basketball for real.”

“Right.” Aomine’s voice is flat, like the sound equivalent of a red traffic light. Stop. Ryouta wonders how committed he is to this and decides that it’s enough for one more try.

“Have you asked him about it?” Ryouta asks quickly, cheerfully. Bouncing through the question like it wasn’t weighted with two tonnes of emotional baggage. He’s pretty sure Kuroko walked away from Aomine about the same time he walked away from basketball but surely there must be something to salvage. Aomine drives for the basket. Ryouta blocks him quickly only for Aomine to turn quickly and dart past him while he’s still trying to process what happened. The ball slams through the net and bounces away. Ryouta watches it numbly.

“Whatever. I’m not his keeper.”

Aomine leaves after that final cold statement. He goes without a backwards glance and takes all the tension in the room with him. Ryouta wanders over to slump against the wall, the basketball still bouncing across the floor until it rolls to a stop in a far corner. The gym is cold and empty and quiet. A perfect fucking metaphor for Ryouta’s heart.

_Well, I tried,_ he thinks, and knows it’s just another lie.

.

Ryouta feels less than enamoured of his new team at Kaijou. They’re average; nothing compared to Teiko, nothing compared to _him_. The school itself is nice; it doesn’t take long for the girls to swarm him and his classmates to be drawn in by his easy grin and infectious laugh. The teachers are easy to flatter and cajole into going easy on him, and his grades are the same low average they’ve always been.

It feels- it feels like the start of middle school all over again, except now he’s loved and lost. Ryouta thinks he would have rather not loved at all.

He’s picking up more modelling jobs again just to fill in the time he can no longer fill with friends, and the time he doesn’t really want to spend playing basketball with a lot of mediocre strangers. That’s not to say he doesn’t play basketball at all. He goes to a few practises, just to keep his skills sharp.

In fact he jars his wrist against a ball in practise, when he’s so focused on practising by himself that he’s not paying attention until it’s almost too late to stop the ball flying at his face. It’s a rookie mistake, and Ryouta would not have made it last year, but then, he attended every practise and trained hard last year too so a lot of things have changed. Even today he’s not here in spirit, just an idle decision made from boredom. He doesn’t need to practise to be better than the entirety of the Kaijou basketball team put together.

It’s minor injury, he could probably even get away with not icing it, but his new captain storms over in a rage. As angry as he was short, Kasamatsu-senpai has spent much of their acquaintance yelling at Ryouta already. He sighs as he sees his approach; practise is finishing any way and he wasn’t really in the mood for a lecture on responsibility right now.

Ryouta tries to escape. “Senpai it’s fine, I’ll just ice it at home.”

Kasamatsu bulldozes over him. “Don’t be an idiot! We’ll need to wrap that! Follow me,” He stomps off towards the bench with a first aid box resting on it. Ryouta follows him wearily, wondering if Kasamatsu ever does any of his walking casually.

He sits on the bench obediently and doesn’t move when Kasamatsu pulls out a roll of bandages. His captain shifts impatiently and gestures to Ryouta.

“Take off the wristband, I can’t wrap it with that on.”

Ryouta shrugs. “I’m not doing that senpai, I told you.” Kasamatsu observes him flatly.

“You hiding something under there?”

“Yep.” Ryouta pops the ‘p’. Kasamatsu’s expression turns thunderous.

“It still needs to be wrapped. Take it off idiot,” he says with greater agitation.

“Nope!” Ryouta pops the ‘p’ again and beams. He’s ready for a fight, ready to die on this hill if he has to.

He doesn’t have to.

“Fine. Do it yourself, but if you do a shitty job I’ll make you redo it, no weaselling away.”

Kasamatsu passes him the roll and stalks off to start putting balls away while Ryouta tapes his wrist. All the other members of the team are clearing out and heading home, but Ryouta keeps an eye out for any approaching members the whole time his wristband is off. He’s putting the remaining bandages back in the kit when Kasamatsu comes back.

“It’ll do,” he says after checking Ryouta’s wrist, and nothing else until they’re parting ways at the school gate. Kasamatsu abruptly shoots out a hand that hooks around the back of Ryouta’s neck and hauls him around.

“That shit you’ve been pulling since you started? That’s not gonna fly on my team.”

Ryouta makes a startled noise, pulls away only to be yanked back and stared down. Kasamatsu has a severity and intensity about him that might have been fairly attractive if he wasn’t a massive pain in Ryouta’s ass and also not Aomine.

“You wanna skip practise? Quit the team. You wanna come to practise? You’re gonna train. You’re good idiot, but there’s better out there, for you and for other people. So here’s how it’s gonna be. You’re gonna come to practise, and you’re gonna listen and you’re gonna get better than whatever half-assed shit you got going on now. Or, you’re not gonna come to practise and I’m not gonna see you again, period. We clear?”

Ryouta nods, eye wide. “Sure thing Senpai. Can you let go of me?”

Kasamatsu does, observes him fiercely, then snorts loudly. “Whatever. You’ll learn. Ill see you tomorrow Kise.” He marches off, self-assured in the extreme.

Ryouta blinks after him, bamboozled mostly, but with the beginnings of an interest he hasn’t felt in a while.

.

That’s where it begins for Ryouta, with that grip that allows no argument. Maybe it doesn’t go anywhere until Kagami Taiga truly tears him from his pedestal. But it starts when Kasamatsu demands more from him, tells him that he isn’t good enough, that there are heights still to reach.

It takes the combined forces of Taiga Kagami and Kuroko to bring the Miracles down to Earth and back together. They’re not a team, anymore, but they are something new, and friendship fills in the gaps.

Ryouta has a new team now, one he loves and values. And in his old teammates he has rivals, something to strive for again.

Kuroko gives him basketball back, and Kasamatsu promises him Ryouta will get to keep it, but Aomine- Ryouta can’t even look him in the eye. He struggles his way through an awkward reunion and then through the games with the miracles that follow. And part of him is thrilled, to see Aomine grinning, fierce and determined and full of life on the court. Fighting Kagami toe to toe and delighted all the while.

Part of Ryouta feels like he’s going to burst from a skin too small to contain him when Aomine looks him in the eye again and dares him to try.

But another, stronger and more insidious part weaves around the memory of rejection.

It is years ago now, but much fresher is the memories Ryouta has of doing nothing to help Aomine. Like he was trying to punish him for not wanting Ryouta by leaving him to lose to the two things he loved most. And even if Aomine has basketball and Kuroko again now, that is no thanks to Ryouta. Sick guilt festers in his chest; stops him from properly fixing their friendship the same way he’s reconnected with the other miracles and Momoi. Who says he even deserves to be friends with Aomine anyway if he’s not even good enough to knock sense into him the way Kuroko and Kagami have knocked sense into him?

It stops him from talking to Aomine at all really, until Akashi demands that they all attend an afternoon of weekend basketball to hone their skills and Ryouta finishes the day by himself in public restroom after the insisting the others go on ahead.

He’s crouched over his aching ankle, irritated with himself for every reason under the sun and shitty besides. He hasn’t been sleeping well lately. Ryouta tenses when he feels himself being watched.

"Ah Aominecchi," Ryouta says wearily when he turns and finds that someone was in fact watching him, and that someone is Aomine, leaning against the wall like his spine couldn't possibly hold him up on its own. Because of course Ryouta's luck can't last forever and Aomine is nothing if not stubborn.  

"What's wrong?" Ryouta inquires after a moment, when Aomine remains silent, watching him with dark eyes. Still silence, and Ryouta frowns, confused, and more irritated than he'd like to be. It had been a long day, it would be a long night, and he didn't have the time to waste indulging Aomine's particular brand of narcissism. 

"Aominecchi seriously what," he demands, turning to plant his hands on his hips. Aomine seems to consider something as he observes Ryouta from head to toe. Ryouta, for his part, tenses, anxiety rising to tell him that something might be terribly wrong. 

Then Aomine flicks a pointed glance down at Ryouta's ankle. 

"You're limping," he says. Ryouta blinks. Oh. Okay. No less confusing but at least Aomine was talking and they could actually get this over with.  Ryouta can go back to keeping a careful distance and his heart could go back to slowly suffocating itself rather wringing violently in the game of twister it was currently playing.

"Oh," he says. "Yeah." Tilts his head in a pointed question. "What about it?" 

Now Aomine looks irritated as well, his brow quickly dropping into a frown. 

"Your ankle is fucked," he reiterates, slow and deliberate, like Ryouta couldn't feel the throbbing pain shooting up his leg until Aomine deigned to condescendingly let him know. Ryouta bristles, exhaustion combining with irritation to give him at his most petulant and unpleasant (something he generally avoided at all costs because the fall out was never worth the satisfaction). 

"So?" He snaps, a slow and deliberate mimic of Aomine's tone, thrown back at him. Aomine blinks, faltering slightly again, until his frown drops into a scowl that Ryouta knows well enough to put up his fists for. 

"So you're being an idiot, dumbass," he scoffs (redundantly, Ryouta thinks, unkind in his anger). Ryouta fires up instantly, more ready for a fight than he's ever been, and drunk on a toxic mixture of repressed frustration, potent bitterness and an unrequited love for the world at large. Full of fury he’s nothing but savagely amused when Aomine leans back in surprise, his irritation fading in response to something he'd never expected from Ryouta, of all people. 

"How about you fuck off and let me handle my own business?" Ryouta hisses furiously. Aomine jerks back again, slightly pale.

"Christ," he says. 

It's like a bucket of cold water tipped over his head. Ryouta is not in the right state of mind to do this tonight, and if he runs away with every dark, pathetic thing that's in him Aomine is going to cop a lot of things he doesn't deserve. They were the kind of things that should be directed at Ryouta himself, because he can hardly blame Aomine for not loving him when Ryouta can't even win a goddamn game of basketball. He can't even do the one fucking thing that Aomine _needs_ him to do.

( _And fuck how it burns-how it’s always burned- that Kuroko was the one to bring Aomine back to himself. But of course he was, why would Ryouta be enough now when he wasn’t enough before?_ )

But no, Ryouta isn't going to be the sort of person who lashes out in an attempt to turn his own flaws back on others. That’s never been who he is. He takes a deep breath, unclenches his fists and wrestles a tired, apologetic smile onto his face. 

"Sorry, I'm kind of tired at the moment," he forces out as calm as he can make it, trying to give his words the usual airy cheer. "Got a few big modelling jobs coming up and I’ve had to _diet_. I'm fine, I'll see you later." 

Aomine is unreadable again, anger gone, and he watches Ryouta's face as though looking for the cracks in his smile. Ryouta thinks he has cracked quite enough for one evening and keeps it firmly in place, gesturing for Aomine to move out of the doorway.  Aomine does not move.

"No," he says flatly. Ryouta blinks, smile faltering before he can stop it. 

"No?" He echoes, more baffled than he'd like. 

"No," Aomine agrees, then "Don't do that." 

"Don't do what?" Ryouta demands. 

"You're a liar," he accuses. Ryouta takes this blow flat-footed and unprepared. But the simplicity and baselessness of the accusation gives him an immediate response to rally behind.

"I didn't lie!" he exclaims. "I'm tired and my ankle will be fine." He eyes the door, wondering if a making a break for it would be worth getting away from this bizarre turn in the conversation. Aomine huffs, taking a step forward to block Ryouta off from the door in a more pointed way. Ryouta just stares at him apprehensively, uncomprehendingly. They face-off for a long silent moment. 

"You're angry, so be fucking angry," Aomine snaps unexpectedly. "You don't want to walk out, you want to tear me a new one for being an asshole. So instead of running away why don't you fucking do it?"

He delivers it as a challenge, arms crossed, chin tilted and eyes flashing the way they do when he’s on the court, standing between Ryouta and the ring. Ryouta's mouth hangs open and he registers that he should close it but can't quite muster the agency. 

"Uh huh . . . Um what?" He manages, eloquently. Aomine scoffs, the scowl back in full force.

"I have no idea what you're fucking thinking ever, and I doubt anyone else has any more of a fucking clue than I do. Your leg could be completely shredded and you'd smile your way through someone cutting it off. You could be angry enough to kill someone and you'd skip away singing. You're a goddamn liar Kise."

"I- you want me to be angry?" Ryouta's voice gets caught in his throat and a terrible fear rises in him. This wasn't supposed to happen. Aomine should be angry at _him_ , considering how miserably he'd failed to help him when he was suffering. That was why Ryouta was leaving; he had no right to be angry at anyone but himself. 

Aomine makes a frustrated noise, one hand flying to his hair to clench and pull.

"What the fuck does it matter what I want?" He demands. "You're angry at me, so be angry! Tell me where to go. Punch me. Just do _something_!"

"I'm not angry enough to punch you," Ryouta manages numbly, both an admission and a denial. Aomine latches onto it like a dog with a bone. 

"But you are angry," he declares triumphantly. Ryouta sighs, letting himself deflate slowly. Maybe he does know what Aomine wants after all.

"Not angry with you. You didn't do anything. I'm leaving because it wouldn't be fair to take it out on you," he admits quietly. He shoves his hands in his pockets and waits.

"Bullshit you're not," Aomine snorts. "You're usually fucking impossible to get rid of and I've heard from you maybe twice in five weeks." Ryouta is shaking his head before Aomine's even finished. Aomine's clenched his fists and for all his fronting Ryouta can tell he's confused and hurt because it always manifests as confrontation, with Aomine. Always.

Ryouta has hurt him. Aomine is trying to work out why. Maybe he does need to stop lying, just for a little bit. Even though he knows it won't go well. Even though it's going to cost him everything. 

"Do you remember when I kissed you? Back in middle school?" Ryouta asks, sure and steady. And this time it's Aomine who's caught off guard. He flushes slightly, mutters a quick 'yeah' when Ryouta waits patiently. 

"Do you know why I did?" He continues. Aomine, still flushed, manages a shrug. 

"Curiosity? I'm a hot dude? I knew you liked both." 

Ryouta starts, momentarily derailed. "You knew I liked guys before then?" 

"Well, yeah," Aomine gets out, fighting through his embarrassment. "You weren't as good at hiding it as you are now. I could see it when you first met Akashi. You thought he was hot." 

Ryouta accepts that and moves on. 

"I did think you were attractive," he admits. "But I thought a lot of people were attractive- like Akashicchi- and I wouldn't have taken the chance if it'd just been that." He pauses to wind himself up to the next part. The part that was pretty much going to take what was left of his bruised heart and throw it in a meat grinder but. This wasn't really about him anymore. 

Not when he'd hurt Aomine, who thought Ryouta was a liar. 

Aomine, for once in his life, reads the mood, and waits silently for Ryouta to be ready. In fact, there's an almost a desperate hint to his features, which spurs Ryouta to just get it over with. Like ripping off a band-aid that was going to take most of your skin off along with it.

He pulls up his right sleeve, removes his wristband, and shows Aomine the damning characters on his skin.

Having it out in the open after hiding it for so long (especially since he's showing it to the one person he's always wanted to know the _least_ ) leaves his heart pounding in his chest while he fights the desire to hide his arm away where no one will ever see it. Aomine makes a choked sound, shocked and high. Ryouta winces, but he must see this through.  

"I've been in love with you for a long time Aominecchi," Ryouta says softly. "And like I said, that's not your fault. I'm angry at me, Aominecchi. Because I'm sad and bitter and I have no right to be. You don't owe me anything, and I needed time to remind myself of that." 

Ryouta hesitates. "I might still need time." He smiles, an expression more real than anything he's mustered up in a while. "In all honesty, I'm a pretty difficult person." He steps around Aomine, who lets him leave without protest, and is staring at the ground like he can't even bear to look at Ryouta, which- is fair. Ryouta wouldn't want to look at Ryouta right now either.

Ryouta pauses briefly in the doorway, addressing Aomine's back. "Kurokocchi already knows all this, I think, but in case he doesn't can you please tell him? I know that's just running away again, but I never wanted to hurt either of you." 

He leaves as fast as his sore leg will allow. And while it may be completely unsurprising that Aomine doesn't follow, it doesn't make it hurt any less. 

.

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	4. Chapter 4

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Ryouta spends a good two days ignoring his phone and refusing to leave the house before reality catches up with him in the form of his aunt.

He’s face-down on the bed when Honoka comes in. He waits for her to ask what happened again, the way she has been since he arrived home two nights ago. She’s been unusually persistent this time around- Ryouta knows it’s because he’s taking a little longer to shake this off, and because she along with his uncle and the twins are going on a four day hot springs retreat over the weekend. 

“Ryo-chan,” Honoka begins hesitantly. “Do you want me to stay home from the trip?”

Ryouta’s head shoots up. “What? No!” He says, shocked. Honoka looks back at him, eyes tight in the corners and hands clenched in her shirt.

“It would be fine. I’m sure Hiroshi and the girls would have a lovely time anyway, and I don’t feel right leaving you by yourself when you’re so down.” 

Ryouta shakes his head immediately. “No no no I’m fine!” He insists. “I just lost a game of basketball that I wanted to win.” It’s true... in a very convoluted, roundabout way. Honoka stares, her mouth an unhappy line.

“We both know that’s not true!” Bursts out of her. “I know when you’re hurting, and when you’re lying to me Ryo-chan! You’re my little boy and a mother  _always_ knows. I can see when you’re upset, please, _please_ talk to me. I want to help but I never know what’s wrong.” Her voice cracks on the last word. Ryouta sits up.

He’s never seen his aunt like this and hearing her sound so concerned tugs at the special spot in his heart reserved for this woman who raised him when she didn’t have to. Her eyes are wet and Ryouta doesn’t know what to do.

“I’m sorry,” he says numbly. Honoka comes forward and grasps his face. She runs a hand through his hair before she gently cups his cheeks.

“You don’t have to be sorry, Ryo-chan. You never have to be sorry. I just feel like I haven’t done right by you. You never came to me- to either of us as- as a child. I thought you’d, grow out of it as you got more comfortable here. When you realised that we were all here for good- but you didn’t. I don’t know where it went wrong, and I’m sorry Ryo-chan, for making you feel like you didn’t belong with us. I love you darling, so much. As much as the girls and Hiroshi. You’re my sweet little boy, you always have been.” 

Ryouta- Ryouta doesn’t know what to say. So he just tells her everything. By the time he’s finished he’s crying. He doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s the warmth of her arms pulling him forward into her chest while she shushes him softly. 

Maybe it’s because he hasn’t ever really hugged his mother and he didn’t know how much he needed to until she wrapped herself around him.

“It’s alright Ryo-chan. It’ll be alright,” Honoka whispers against his hair as she kisses the top of his head. 

And Ryouta believes it.

.

The doorbell rings a good ten times before Ryouta hauls himself off the couch to answer it. It’s not that the TV program he was watching was particularly interesting, he just knows it’s either Kasamatsu or Momoi here to demand answers and he’s not particularly eager to confront either.

“Yeah Yeah,” He mutters tiredly. “I’m coming.”

He swings it open in his pyjamas, hair a mess and heavy bags under his eyes, ready to face the music only- it’s Aomine. Aomine dressed nicely with his hair combed and his face equal parts determined and nervous. He is beautiful. He is absolutely fucking gorgeous and everything that Ryouta wants. And Ryouta is. Ryouta cannot do this.

"Can I come in?" 

Something explodes in his chest and suddenly Ryouta feels like he’s made of glass and about to fall off the edge of the world.

"Please don't," Ryouta gasps, composure on the verge of collapse. Why is it always like this, he demands despairingly. Why can't he have anything that isn't tainted with bitterness and wanting? Why does it always have to be that aching sense of losing something he's never even had? I'm trying, he pleads, fighting back the tears that will rend him open. I try and try and try and it _never_ changes anything. 

Ryouta looks at Aomine and knows, deep in his bones that he is going to fall apart- truly fall apart- very soon. And that he needs Aomine to leave until he's had time to put himself back together.

"Please. I. More time. I need- I can't. Now is too much it's-"

"Ryouta," Aomine insists, face intent. He pushes like he doesn't care how close to the edge Ryouta is. Maybe he doesn't. He probably doesn't. "I need to talk to you." 

"No!" Ryouta's voice cracks and he can feel his wet lashes brush against his cheek with every frantic blink. His hands tremble and clench against the door frame. 

"I need you to go. Can you just go? I'm doing my best but I'm not- Aominecchi it's a lot, okay? I don't know if it seems stupid- or dramatic or whatever but-"

Ryouta gulps and finds himself regrettably crying in earnest now, his chest throbbing in time with each pained breath. He stumbles back from the doorway, barely even notices Aomine following him until two fever-hot hands wrap around his upper arms and he is pulled into a gentle kiss. Aomine's hands lift to cradle his face like it's something precious. Ryouta wants to fall forward; have Aomine catch him and hold him for real. 

Instead he sobs once, heavy, everything in him breaking apart and screaming for him to lean into the taste and feel of this boy who feels so _right_. Ryouta rips himself away. 

"I don't want that," he manages tightly. Aomine snarls, having rapidly transitioned from stunned at Ryouta's retreat to angry that he did. 

"The hell you don't!" He snaps. "This is exactly what you want you just refuse to just _say_ it for whatever fucking reason! What the hell are you-"

"I never wanted you to _pity_ me," Ryouta chokes out wretchedly. "Or hurt Kurokocchi. I just- I wanted you to love me like I love you. Is that really- really so bad?"

The last question isn't even directed at Aomine anymore. It hangs in the middle of the room, directionless and aimless, unintentional and something he can't take back. Ryouta lets his head fall to watch the floor, hiccupping and backing away a little bit more, desperate for breathing room, for solitude, for nothing at all. Everything he'd tried to hide, out in the open and ready for ridicule. 

"Ryouta," Aomine says, calm and certain. With as much conviction as he's ever said anything. A hand reaches out again, cupping his cheek as gently as Aomine knows how.

"Can I kiss you?"

The world grinds to a halt. Ryouta blinks, his face wet but no longer getting wetter. He thinks for a second in that brief moment of calm. But there's only one thing he can say to that, really. 

"Why?" 

"Because you're fucking gorgeous and a dumbass and I've wanted to since we were fucking thirteen," Aomine says like that explains everything, hissing out a heavy breath after. Only it doesn't explain anything at all, because Ryouta looks like shit and he _did_ kiss Aomine when they were thirteen. He remembers vividly the rejection shortly after. 

"I don't understand," Ryouta admits, head pounding viciously. "You didn't want me." 

"I thought I didn't," Aomine replies quietly, "Back then. Ryouta-  _Ryouta_ , we really need to talk. I've avoided it, made both of us fucking miserable, made a fucking mess of this whole thing. There's plenty of people lined up to punch me for it, I know."

Ryouta frowns, opens his mouth to protest but Aomine cuts him off, a small, but slightly wry grin on his face. 

"To quote Tetsu, I've been 'stupid and selfish'. Satsuki had some shit to say too, and it sounds like your captain is more than ready to make good on his threats." 

"Threats?" Asks Ryouta numbly.

"Oh yeah," Aomine says, grin soft around the edges. "At this point I'm pretty sure I'm living on borrowed time." 

Ryouta just blinks at him, face blank with a lack of comprehension. Aomine's grin fades and he reaches out a hand, gentle and hesitant to cup the side of Ryouta's face; thumb away the tears. Ryouta lets him and leans into Aomine's palm (so warm)- because he's only human.

"Please, please stop crying," Aomine says quietly. "I know it's my fault-"

"It's not," Ryouta says hoarsely, closing both his eyes as Aomine sweeps his thumb across an eyelid. 

"Nah, it is," Aomine insists. "And I'm fucking sorry." 

Ryouta shakes his head soundlessly, feels Aomine sigh, stroke under his eye again, move closer to Ryouta until he can feel the heat radiating off him. He silently wonders at the tenderness of this boy. It's something he's never seen from Aomine- well at least directed towards  _him_. Part of being hopelessly in love had meant seeing all the ways Aomine cared for Momoi and Kuroko, because he was always watching so carefully, even when Aomine thought no one was.

Then Ryouta put everything out of his mind, leaning against Aomine's palm and simply feeling the closeness of the other boy (because he's confused, and he still doesn't know why Aomine's here, but he knows he's going to leave at some point soon and likely won't be coming back. So, yeah, he’ll make the most of things. As always.

"Ryouta?" Aomine says finally, when his breath had calmed and no longer hitched, and the last of his tears had been wiped away. Ryouta reluctantly opens gummy, sore eyes. The first thing he notices is the closed door, and the fact that he didn't remember Aomine shutting it, though he must have at some point when he pushed them both through the doorway. Coming back to himself, Ryouta takes a step back, watches Aomine warily, and waits for the other shoe to drop.

Aomine gazes back at him, face unreadable again, hand belatedly dropping to his side without Ryouta's face to rest against.

"Do you want something to drink?" Ryouta asks, if only to fill the silence between them, becoming more charged as it extended on, unbroken. He clenches his hands against his thighs with helpless tension, shifts from foot to foot, desperately ignores the churning feeling in his gut. 

"Ryouta," Aomine begins abruptly. "Can we talk?"

And here it comes; Ryouta forces a small, anxious smile to his face. Then drops it almost immediately, worried it would crack under the strain.

"Yeah, do you want to sit down?" He offers. His voice is depressingly raspy, unavoidably hoarse, and nothing like the cheer he normally projects. Ryouta tries not to wince at the sound of it. 

"That's probably a good idea," Aomine admits, frowning at the ground. "This might take a while."

Ignoring those ominous words as best he can, Ryouta walks over to sit on the couch, staring at his lap as Aomine follows and sits down beside him, closer than Ryouta would have expected. 

"I don't have a Soul mark," Aomine says abruptly. Ryouta jolts, snapping his head around to blink at him dumbly. Aomine scowls, "It's not that hard to believe, is it?"

"N-no," Ryouta says haltingly. "I just thought...with Kurokocchi-"

"Yeah about that," Aomine cuts him off. "I was gonna get to all that shit later, but I think we should clear this up first. I'm not in love with Tetsu." 

Ryouta mind implodes into the mix of the stress, anxiety and hysterics he has suffered in the past 30 minutes, this statement the final blow that shuts down his ability to function correctly.

"What?" He demands, voice almost shrill. "You absolutely fucking are!" 

Aomine is taken aback, leaning away slightly. "I'm not!" He insists, eyes wide with surprise. "Maybe I had a bit of a crush when we were kids-" 

"A _crush_?" Ryouta snorts explosively, watching Aomine's stunned expression, the other boy clearly not expecting the vehemence of Ryouta's reaction.

"Yeah, a _crush_ when I was a _kid_ ," Aomine says, voice even but lined with an edge that also lingered in his eyes. Ryouta observes him doubtfully. 

"Okay," he agrees, his voice unrepentantly sceptical. Aomine hisses in frustration, Ryouta was impressively unimpressed.

"We've skipped some shit," Aomine snaps. "Shit we shouldn't have skipped." He wraps one hand around his shirt and lifts the hem, revealing a long, rectangular patch of scar tissue along the left side of his abdomen. Ryouta makes a noise he can't help, one hand making an aborted attempt to touch the mottled skin before he comes back himself and returns it firmly to his lap. Aomine makes a strange face at the movement that Ryouta can't interpret before he’s speaking again. 

"Long story short; this was where my mark was. You probably saw it in the change rooms. I fell out of a tree as a kid before it had a chance to fully form, took a hell of a lot of skin off on the way down and I never knew what it was going to say." Ryouta blinked at him in shock.

"Well, it probably said-" he begins haltingly. 

"Do not say Tetsu," Aomine warns. "I'm 100% fucking sure it was not him."

"But I thought it was-"

"Tetsu's name. And I was hiding it because that's what people do. Yeah, I get it." Aomine finishes for him. Ryouta's brows draw together. 

"But if it wasn't Kurokocchi's, why were you so- so-" 

"Attracted to him?" Aomine finishes again. Ryouta directs a glare at him because it’s not cute. Aomine ignores him.

"I was pissed off, at first. It felt like I was missing my chance or something if I’d never know who they were, but then I decided that's bullshit. Most people fall in love normally and are fine that way. I'll love who I want to love and fate can go fuck itself." Ryouta digests that slowly. 

"So Kurokocchi-"

"So Tetsu didn't have my name, and he didn't care, and that felt fucking great because everyone else cared so much." Aomine looks at his hands. "When you kissed me, that's where I was at. You were pretty, you were interested, and I liked you, but you wore a wristband 24/7 and looked at it like it was your soul already. You told every girl who asked you out that you were saving yourself, and I thought you'd drop me the second you found them. Tetsu didn't have my name and didn't _have_ to want me but did anyway. So we got along fine and then all that shit happened and it ended and the thing that made me angriest at the time was the thought of losing my friend." Aomine pauses. "I'm not in love with Tetsu," he says again, with a finality in his voice. Ryouta is still as the implications of that sink in. Then anger lights like a fire in his stomach.

"You think I love you because I have to?" He asks, a dangerous lilt to his voice. Aomine jolts up straight, mouth opening in confusion.

"What? No-"

"You're right, of course. Why didn't I think of that? I obviously know nothing about you as a person. _Clearly_ nothing was real and aren't I just _so_ dumb for buying into all that soulmates nonsense-" Ryouta hisses, working himself up, something equal parts angry and hurt slowly building inside. He is almost unable to believe that Aomine would disregard everything he'd felt so quickly, that he would _belittle_ Ryouta that way. Aomine snarls over the top of him. 

"No! I'm not saying it's not real, or that you wouldn't have anyway, but do you really think you would have loved me as quickly as you did if my name wasn't on your wrist? If you didn't think it was inevitable, or unavoidable?" Aomine is as serious as Ryouta has ever seen him, his hand wrapped tight around Ryouta's arm. 

"Yes," Ryouta replies achingly honest, matching his solemnity. "I knew I wasn't your soul mate within ten seconds of meeting you and by the end of the day you were all I could think about." 

There is a beat, full of burning eyes and that stomach dropping feeling telling him that he'd made another leap off the cliff and is about to impale himself upon the very sharp rocks at the bottom. But then Aomine is abruptly in his space, sharing his breath for the space of one second before a hand slid into Ryouta's hair and pulled him forward. 

Ryouta lets him. Even if Aomine hasn't said anything about how he felt towards Ryouta. Even if Ryouta has pretty much promised to be in love with him forever. Even if he doesn't believe in soulmates. What did it matter at this point? It’s going to hurt in the end regardless of what he does now.

Ryouta surges forward, grasping Aomine's waist, kissing with his heart in his throat and loving this boy so much it aches. A flicker of something warm against his lips and Ryouta open his mouth easily, deepening the kiss until all he could taste, all he could feel was Aomine. 

When they next part for breath Aomine pulls away with a strange noise, tilting Ryouta's head back with the hand in his hair to press kisses against his jaw and down his neck. Ryouta moans helplessly when he reaches the junction of neck and shoulder, but Aomine mouths one burning hot kiss to his bare skin before he simply leans forward, panting softly into Ryouta's neck. Ryouta blinks slowly, dazedly, coming back to himself bit by bit and looking hazily down at Aomine's dark hair, soft and tickling against his jaw. 

Aomine releases his hair to wrap both arms around Ryouta, pulling him close and nuzzling his face into Ryouta's shoulder. Ryouta waits, hands coming up to stroke up and down Aomine's back from shoulder to waist, luxuriating in the fact the Aomine doesn't tell him to stop.

"Not yet," Aomine huffs. "We're not finished yet." Ryouta just hums, tilting his head to rest against Aomine's. 

"When we first met, before I knew anything about you, I wanted to kiss you more than I'd ever wanted to kiss anyone in my life. Makes sense, I told myself, he's really fucking hot. After that I wanted to play basketball with you after I kissed you, and make you laugh after the game. I told myself he's hot, he loves basketball, you're friends."

Ryouta couldn't breathe.

"But it was basically just the wristband. That stupid fucking wristband. I thought you wanted some fun while you waited, that you weren’t gonna settle for anyone else, and I was so fucking into you that I couldn't handle that. So I chose Tetsu instead. And it was great. But he's my friend first, and we both knew that. Even if I wouldn't say it." 

“That’s ridiculous,” Ryouta mutters. “I could have been waiting forever. Most people never meet their soulmates.” 

“Maybe.” Aomine shrugs. “With weird freaky universe stuff I- dunno. I just thought that maybe somehow you  _knew y_ ou would, and that’s why you were so set on them.”

  
Ryouta makes a choked noise that sounded a little like whine. Aomine held him tighter. 

"Why didn't you tell me?" Aomine asked desperately. "You didn't say anything." 

"You didn't recognise my name," Ryouta manages roughly. "I thought there was no point. I thought you were in love with someone else. I thought you had Kurokocchi's name. I thought you didn't want me-"

"I do. I do, okay? I don't care if it wasn't your name on my stomach and I never did. Kise, I fucking love you." 

Ryouta sobs, face wet again, eyes squeezed closed. He clenches Aomine so tightly he ends up almost in his lap, facing each other on the couch as they were. Aomine sighs into his hair. 

"You're such a cry baby," he says, but the edges of his voice are shaky and the arms that rest around Ryouta are tight. 

. 

Ryouta is so blindingly happy in the following days that it almost outweighs the terror that threatens to choke him every time Aomine leaves the room. It's not anything Aomine does- he's perfect (or perfectly Aomine anyway). All of this is perfect. Ryouta is in love with someone (his soulmate) who is in love with him too. He should be happy, and he is. It's just- surely this can't last?

"Kise, you hungry?" Aomine calls through the doorway. He's dressed and ready to leave since Ryouta's aunt, uncle and the twins are due home tomorrow. But in the days since Aomine appeared on his doorstep, they've each left the house once. Aomine left to grab clothes and a toothbrush, and Ryouta going to the final shoot for a magazine spread that he hadn’t felt right cancelling.

Ryouta raises his phone, “Nah, but you might wanna change into something more basketball worthy. Akashi’s in town called everyone for street ball in a couple hours.”

Aomine’s eyes light up. Ryouta laughs, answers the unspoken question. “Kagamicchi will be there.”

“Give me a minute,” Aomine says, vanishing up the stairs to Ryouta’s bedroom. It’s literally a minute before he’s back down, clothes changed, and a sports bag packed with two towels and four water bottles in hand.

“Give _me_ a minute,” Ryouta laughs. He pulls himself off the couch and up the stairs. It doesn’t take him long to change either- he and Aomine have always, first and foremost, had basketball in common. He’s back downstairs and ready to go before Aomine’s even started complaining. Ryouta grins at him.

Aomine grasps his hand firmly at the door, dares Ryouta to take it back with his eyes and only settles when Ryouta shrugs back in obvious delight. They leave the house together.

It’s not until they're nearly at the court, in sight of the others, when Ryouta gently extracts his hand from Aomine's, not sure whether Aomine is ready for everyone to know about them yet (or whether Ryouta is). Aomine flashes him a confused look and grabs his hand again.

"What are you doing?" He asks, gripping Ryouta's hand firmly enough that extracting it would be a problem. Ryouta blinks at him, surprised.

"I just thought you might not want everyone to- to see? Yet?" He says, gesturing to the approaching court and scant distance between them and their currently occupied friends. Aomine startles, flicking a look to the court that says he hadn't even thought about it- which seemed pretty par-for-course with Aomine.

"Aominecchi?" Ryouta says pointedly, tugging their joined hands when Aomine says nothing. He turns back.

"Sorry, but they already know, you know?" Aomine reveals causally with a shrug. "Basically, about everything. Apparently, we're not subtle or whatever." Ryouta comes to an abrupt stop, pulling Aomine with him.

"What?" Ryouta demands, aghast. Aomine gives him a weird look, shrugs again.

"You know Tetsu and Satsuki know," he points out. "And Akashi told me once to watch what I was doing in case it upset our teamwork in front of Midorima and Murasakibara. Oh and your captain threatened to knock my teeth out, so I figured you’d told him?" Ryouta makes a choked noise.

Ryouta has no idea how Kasamatsu would  _know-_ he certainly didn’t tell him-except that Ryouta’s just that obvious. He groans internally, that’s gonna be a fun time later. The thought is miserable to the extreme. 

"So the whole time...?" He manages, thinking of middle school and how it must have looked to everyone else. No wonder they'd always felt more distant from him- they probably thought he was crazy. Aomine notices his distress immediately.

"Hey, no one cares," he says, stepping closer into Ryouta's space until they're nose to nose and it's one quick movement for him to duck a kiss just under Ryouta's jaw. His hand is hot where it wraps around Ryouta's, and his eyes are soft. "They were more mad at me for jerking you around than anything else." Ryouta melts into his touch and relaxes enough to feel a bit exasperated at Aomine's words.

"You didn't jerk me around," he says. "And I know they wouldn't care, I just didn't want-"

"Anyone knowing that you had a problem? The whole laughing idiot routine doesn't work as well when people know you're not actually an idiot," Aomine points out with a smirk. Ryouta laughs a little.

"Debatable," he says wryly. Aomine's eyes narrow, and he peers into Ryouta's face intently.

"Which part?" He asks seriously, smirk gone. Ryouta blinks, caught off guard.

"Uh-"

"Oi, are you guys just gonna stand there all day or are we gonna have a game!"

Aomine leans away to look over his shoulder and Ryouta breathes a sigh of relief. He's learning that Aomine's undivided attention is a heady thing, and dangerous when they were in public.

"Yeah yeah we're coming asshole!" He calls back to Kagami, who flips him the bird and turns back to the one-on-one he was having with his American friend while Akashi, Murasakibara and Kuroko watched.

“We’ll talk about this later,” Aomine warns, turning to tug Ryouta along with him towards the others.

“Sure,” Ryouta agrees bemusedly. Aomine’s sudden war on miscommunication was appreciated but kind of like watching a dog learning to walk on two legs. Even if there was something unequivocally incredible about having Aomine hold his hand right up until their friends couldn’t possibly not see.  

He leaves Aomine to posture at Kagami and settles in to watch by the court- his ankle is still a little tender to be playing as hard as he would have to against the other Miracles- knowing Momoi would be over at some point to keep him company. He’s right, and when she does she hugs him more fiercely than their scant week of separation warrants in Ryouta‘s mind. Her voice is warm when she whispers in his ear.

“I’m sorry for telling Tetsu-kun without asking, but Dai-chan wouldn’t listen to me.” 

She lets go with a watery smile that Ryouta barely has time to return before she’s marching off again to no doubt demand more attention from Aomine. He watches her wryly, glad that she intervened but also dreading what was to come. 

.

It’s not until they’ve finished playing and are getting ready to leave that Ryouta has to face the real consequences of being so obvious to everyone around them. He’s standing to the side, waiting for Aomine to finish arguing with Kagami so they can leave when someone steps up to his side.

"So," Kuroko says, and nothing else. Ryouta looks into those wide, expectant eyes and bites back a groan.

"Can we not?" He mutters, aware of the futility of the question even as he asks it. Nothing ever stops Kuroko when he's on a mission. He is a deceptively mild-mannered force of nature, any of the miracles (and quite a few others besides) could attest to that.

True to form Kuroko blinks placidly at him, a hint of a smile lingering about his mouth as he meaningfully flicks his eyes between Ryouta sitting beside him and Aomine measuring metaphorical dicks with Kagami on the court while Midorima 'chaperoned' (or basically egged them on while appearing to be haughty and above it all).

"Can we not what, Ryouta-kun?" He asks politely, practically vibrating with triumph. At least Momoi had the common decency to merely wink and move on, her tact outweighing her need to be obnoxiously delighted about finally having the last of Aomine's biggest problems from the past year resolved. Kuroko, on the other hand, has tact only on the rare occasions when it suits him. Ryouta shakes his head, planting his face in his hands.

"This whole thing is kind of mortifying enough without knowing I've had an audience the whole time," Ryouta explains. He focuses on forcing the heat out of his cheeks through sheer force of will. Kuroko hums softly.

"Sorry Ryouta-kun," he begins, not sounding even remotely sorry. "But it's a long time for you to be unhappy. I think I'm- I think we're allowed to be glad that you're not, now."

"Aomine hasn't been unhappy that long." And despite what he says Ryouta still strongly suspects that the loss of basketball in the past year caused Aomine far more pain than the loss of Ryouta- who he hadn't even wanted in more than the abstract anyway.

"Longer than you think," Kuroko says, something in his voice that Ryouta doesn't recognize. "And you have not been as happy as you are now in all the time I've known you."

"Yeah but-" Ryouta protests reflexively, surprised that Kuroko had even noticed (which in hindsight was silly- Kuroko notices everything). Then he stops when he realizes how his words might sound out loud. Kuroko, like a dog with bone, pounces on it immediately.

"But what?" He asks, leaving no room for avoidance.

"But I didn't think you liked me all that much," Ryouta pointed out wryly, amusement curling in his words because he knows he was probably the least close to each of the other miracles- especially compared to how they were with each other. "To be honest I didn't think any of you thought I had the brain power to angst."

Ryouta's amusement dies abruptly when he realizes that Kuroko does not appear to share it. He is almost frowning.

"You are a hard person to know, Ryouta-Kun," he says. "You are not very honest, and sometimes it's hard to know how you feel. In turn, you seem to struggle when it comes to understanding how other people feel too."

"Uh, sorry?" Ryouta says, completely caught off guard. Kuroko casts off his apology with an abrupt shake of his head.

"I don't think you do it on purpose, Ryouta-kun, not really. Or not with the intent to hurt. But it changes the way you see everyone, because you assume everything is conditional on you behaving a certain way.

"I don't- uh," Ryouta says.

"That's your real problem," Kuroko continues quietly, gently. "It’s not that you're unlikeable. It's that you refuse to be honest, even with yourself. We are your friends Ryouta, you can trust us to care for you as you are, even if that you isn't how you want to be."

Ryouta closes his mouth when he realizes that it's hanging wide open. There is a pause while he collects the rest of himself and Kuroko waits patiently.

"How far from perfect is too far?" Ryouta finally jokes weakly. Kuroko smiles now, just a tiny little curl at the corners of his mouth.

"You will have to find out. A leap of faith, as it were. Friendship is based on trust, Ryouta-kun, like love." He answers. Ryouta opens his mouth and is less than surprised when he once again has nothing to say. Kuroko shrugs at him wryly.

And then Aomine is there, flipping Kagami off one last time as he walks up to them. Kuroko nods to him, a subtle grin on his face that Aomine returns, all affection and trust and respect. Ryouta surprises himself when he’s not jealous. Before an exchange like that would have had him all but crawling out of his skin, bitter and angry because he was bitter. But it’s just . . . right. It’s Kuroko and Aomine; this is the way they should be.

“Goodbye Ryouta-kun, Aomine-kun,” Kuroko says, quietly content. “I will see you both soon.”

“See you Testu,” Aomine answers, waving him off. Ryouta watches him leave with Kagami, so lost in thought he doesn’t realise Aomine’s trying to get his attention until he grabs his wrist with one hand and waves the other in front of his eyes. Ryouta blinks at him.

“You good?” Aomine asks, hand tight over the characters for his name on Ryouta’s skin. Ryouta looks down to where they’re joined.

He’s come around to the idea that he has a mark and Aomine doesn’t. It’s fitting; he belongs to Aomine, through and through. He has since the day they met. Nothing will change that. Nothing _did_ change that. Whether Aomine had a mark or not didn’t matter before, and it wouldn’t matter now.

In loving Aomine, even for all the time that Aomine wasn’t loving him back, Ryouta gained so many precious things. He has his mark to thank for basketball, his friends, and for what makes him the person he is.

Ryouta meets Aomine eyes and smiles.

“I’m good.”

Maybe the Universe was onto something after all.

.

.

.


End file.
